


sunbathing

by aweekofsaturdays



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Multi, Pack Feels, Recovery, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 05:16:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12074253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aweekofsaturdays/pseuds/aweekofsaturdays
Summary: Allison is gone and everything is different.





	sunbathing

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to think this piece is hopeful, but ymmv. It bothered me how little space Teen Wolf gave to the consequences of the death of a major and beloved character, and I wanted to explore some of the aftermath of that for Lydia in particular. 
> 
> Please heed the tags, and please feel free to comment or reach out if this resonates with you <3

The sun feels almost cruel in its warmth as Lydia lies by the pool, trying to remember how it felt before. Before everything went to hell, before it was now or never time and they missed their window, before the soft beat of the sun on her skin reminded her of those who would never feel it again. It’s a weight she carries with her now, somehow both a lead anchor and a hole with rough edges, this space in her heart where Allison used to be. 

Freshman year at Yale Lydia tries to fill it, with drugs and with sex with too many girls and boys and always, always, with music, drowning out her thoughts with a set of headphones Allison lent her once and never took back. She is surprised sometimes, looking at the face buried between her legs or nipping at her neck, and it’s not Allison or Jackson or Scott, none of them familiar or beloved. She likes it in the moment but the next morning she always washes them off her skin, scrubbing at herself hard to remove all traces. None of them matter. The drugs help. 

She comes home after freshman year, and everyone takes for granted that she’s fine. The veneer never cracked, the grades are somehow still straight As (and one A+), and she talks and laughs with her parents and her friends returned but still, still, that emptiness she’s avoided yawns at the center of her. She ignores it, or tries to.

Her childhood bed is familiar and she turns over one morning, still mostly asleep, seeking dark hair and strong arms. She gets out of bed as if scalded when she realizes the other pillow is cold and it’s been years now, anyhow. 

The pool is its own solace. The quietness under the surface, the solitude of the body on guard against the cool surrounding of water. Lydia focuses on breath, on life, thinks only occasionally about breathing in and letting go. Dying in a pool is beneath her, she reminds herself. And she promised Scott she’d stay.

The pack drifts closer when she comes home. They always believed Scott was their magnetic north, but she’s as much a factor in that as any, the other point of the triangle that’s been made of their square. Derek and Braeden come back and she sleeps in their bed for a few nights. They don’t ask and she says nothing, but they distract her and press their fingers into her skin, holding her when tears leak from her eyes, and she clings to them as if they’re somehow more solid than anything else she knows. When they leave again, she’s OK, because what they’ve left behind is what’s important. 

Scott visits, often. Sometimes they sunbathe together, falling asleep side by side in the sun. He helps her to clean out some old stuff her room, crying with her over the photos of Allison, the long cold block of grief dissolving in them together, puddling out over their clasped hands. They don’t have sex but they sleep together sometimes, when the loss is too much and they need to hold the empty space between them in the rumpled sheets, just for a little while. 

It’s never the same with Stiles and he doesn’t push it with her, his crush long-past, buried under the rubble of everything that happened. Lydia knows Stiles goes to therapy, medicates, leans on his dad and learns to be a person again. She doesn’t get caught up in it. It’s not for her.

The girls are wonderful to her, all along– they road tripped to her in Connecticut her freshman year, Malia driving and Kira making playlists, surrounding her with their love. It aches every time she sees them, what she could have (should have) had, but they always distract her with the sheer joy of them, that they made it work, that they got out. She thinks they live somewhere near Santa Fe now; it’s hard to keep track when they move around so much but it makes sense, them learning to build a pack together. 

Pack is something that never quite landed with Lydia. Banshees are solitary creatures, always apart, always grieving. But to be something otherworldly comes with the pressure that being of this world brings, and Lydia finds herself, almost against her will, coming alive again. It hurts in its brightness and in her awareness of what she’s lost, but sometimes she almost forgets that there’s a space in her life that’ll never be filled, a love she’ll never understand for its brevity and its magnitude. 

She goes back to school. She arranges her schedule based on classes she wants to take, things that look interesting. She spends hours debating the relative merits of Greek versus Roman statuary, buries herself in the magic of mathematics, gets frustrated at the English class that asks her to explain the stars. She cries about other things, when she’s angry or when she misses home. She talks to Scott a lot, another block in her foundation, one of the sturdy supports making up her life even though another is gone. 

Some mornings, she still wakes up with that aching sense of absence, but sometimes she thinks that maybe it’s tied up in desire, that there are parts of her, half-awakened, that will someday soon emerge. 

On those mornings, Lydia goes to find the sun, and she lets its warmth soothe her until the ache subsides.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! *hands out blankets & tissues*
> 
>  
> 
> [on tumblr here](http://aweekofsaturdays.tumblr.com/post/163373813577/8-lydiaallison)


End file.
